That Elusive Management Spark

May 19, 2004

Four thwinkers at a campfire in the Congaree Swamp

There is a certain intangible, invisible,
elusive "spark" that is the essence of management. If it's
not present in an individual or organization, neither can possibly
hope to manage anything well. They are forever doomed to incompetence,
frustration, and failure. They can only achieve excellence if lady luck
comes their way. This forces the probing mind to ask itself a single
guiding question:

What is that spark?

That is the question each of us needs to ask ourselves, because if we
cannot instantly and confidently say what that spark is, we probably don't
have it. We are not a keeper of the flame. Someone has not passed that
spark on to us, and so even though we might try as hard as we can to "manage," we
can never do it well. If the spark is still new and weak, it may take
more effort to express it.

For example, one person might say the spark is "The
ability to quickly appraise a situation and pick out
the factors that matter most, and then proceed to use
those insights to come to a solid conclusion." Another
might describe it as "Great instinct that most
of the time leads to great results." Yet another
might put it as "When you're up to your neck
in alligators, they always know what to do."

But even those who answer that question must answer it right. There are
far too many people and organizations who think they know what the answer
is. But the results of their actions prove otherwise, because they are
continually bumbling and stumbling their way through personal or business
life, and failing to achieve their full potential.

What is that spark? Those that have it are all going to see it
differently. Ask them what it is, and they may start talking in generalities,
and then in specifics, as they slowly circle around it, trying to say
just what the spark is. Put ten people in a room and ask them the question,
and you will get eleven different answers.

But deep down there is some raw essence that must be the same. It never
changes. So the question is really this: what is the essence of good
management? What is it that all good managers of themselves, others,
or responsibility areas, do well? Conversely, what is it that all bad
managers do not do well? We feel the answer is very simple:

The essence of management excellence is getting the right things done
well.

The Management Maturity Model

Within that answer are two key factors: figuring out what the right thing
to do is, and getting it done well. For simplicity we model this as doing
the right thing or the wrong thing, and doing it well or poorly. This
gives us the four levels of the Management Maturity Model:

Level 4 - Does the right things well.

Level 3 - Does the right things poorly.

Level 2 - Does the wrong things well.

Level 1 - Does the wrong things poorly.

Management excellence is thinking at level four as a matter of habit.
Your company, your department, a project, or your personal behavior may
not be at level four, but you are thinking in those terms and trying
to get there.

Notice how we did not define managment and then say the spark is knowing
or practicing the definition. For example, a reasonable definition of
managment is, "Seeing what the best things to do are, developing
a plan to achieve those objectives, and then managing that plan." Why
does this fall short? Because it describes how to get the right
things done well, rather than the goal of getting the right things done
well. It also does not imply the four levels, which are an extremely powerful
model to guide one's thinking, as we will soon show. Instead, it is a
rote procedure. It is a less powerful, but more easily learned, approach
to becoming a good manager.

The four levels may also be conceptualized this way:

Right
Thing

Wrong
Thing

Done
Well

Level
4

Level
2

Done
Poorly

Level
3

Level
1

Or this way:

This second grid is how Leading Strategic Change, by Black and
Gregersen, 2003, page 11, models this concept. As good as this book is,
it skips discussion of level one, does not use the concept of levels,
and never quite gets to stating what the spark of good management is.
However, it strongly emphasizes the importance of changing a person's
mental model to change their behavior. The above grid is that model, which
is used over and over in the book. The book also presents a very good
discussion of the cycle of a company moving from one state to another
and the various forces involved. For that cycle we are indebted to these
authors.

A Causal Flow Diagram Perspective

Probably the most powerful way to show the four levels is a causal
flow diagram, because this best shows the way system state changes
dynamically. And that is exactly what a good manager is trying to do:
move the system state from a lower level to a higher one. They try to
stay in level four as much as possible or better yet, all the time.
Here's the diagram:

The system can go from one state to any other one, but for simplicity
we are only showing the most common state transitions. We will also only
consider business management as we discuss this cycle. However it is also
applicable to anthing that requires management. Now let's take a walk
through the diagram. (Note - You may want to open another browser window
so you can see the Cycle of Change while you read the rest of this article.)

Level One - A business usually starts at level one. They have
a vision, but it's probably not quite the right one. Because the company
is trying to do something they or no one else has done before, it cannot
be done well at first. And so most businesses start at level one.

But if they have seasoned leadership they can start at any level they
want to, including level four. Deep analysis of customer needs, competition,
the history of the market over time, and such, can lead to doing the right
thing from the start. Similarly, they can launch a carefully planned R & D
effort to perfect how to do things well. Because what they are doing during
startup is R & D, and not production, they are doing things right
from the start.

But most businesses start at level one. Because they are invariably specializing
in something, by doing the same thing over and over they get better and
better at it, until one day they are doing it well. At that point they
are at:

Level Two - But they are still doing the wrong thing. This is
because figuring out the right thing to do is much more difficult
than learning how to perform a task well. Why is that so? There are many
opinions on this. Ours is that figuring out the right thing to do requires
understanding a much larger portion of the system than figuring out how
to do a task better.

Eventually the firm figures out the right thing to do, and they start
doing it. Now an interesting state transition occurs. They are now doing
the right thing instead of the wrong thing. But because that is a new
thing to them, and often to everyone, at first it is done poorly. This
may be unexpected. It may even be unnoticed or denied. But this is a classic
transition, due to the forces involved. It tends to be exactly what happens
as a business climbs up the steps of the Management Maturity Model.

So they are now doing the right thing poorly. This takes them to:

Level Three - Anyone who achieves this level deserves a pat on
the back. It is not easy, especially in a highly competitive world, to
spot the right thing to do. That's because everyone else is too. If everyone
one spots the same right thing to do, then it is no longer right, because
everyone's going to be doing it and none will have a competitive advantage.
This is a bit of a paradox. The only way out is to see what others
cannot see before anyone else sees it. In that sentence lives a large
kernel of the spark of management excellence. But keep it a secret, and
don't tell anyone I told you this.

Once you have reached this level, moving to level four is easier than
getting to level three. Why? Because it is harder to determine the right
thing to do than to do things right. So, much of your time is spent in
level two, trying to move to level three. But once you are in level three,
movement to level four can occur much faster.

And so, by doing the same right thing over and over, you learn how to
do it well. This leads to:

Level Four - This is where you want to get to and stay. This is
because doing the right thing well offers the highest rewards possible.
There is no higher level.

We have called this the Cycle of Change. But what is changing here? You
may think it is the company, as it matures. But that is not what "change" refers
to. It is the ecological niche that is changing. Because corporations
can be considered living entities, their markets are all unique little
niches, spread out over the globe. Just as the biological environment
continually changes, so to do markets. And so sooner or later your market
niche changes so much that what was the right thing is now the wrong thing.
When this occurs, you are now back at level two, and the cycle begins
all over again.

The Passing of the Spark

Let's bring this model of behavior to life with a few examples from my
own business management and consulting career.

How did I get the spark? Long ago, back in 1971, I dropped out
of college. It seemed to have no relevance to what I wanted to do. Of
course, I didn't know what I wanted to do, but that didn't matter. So
I got a few odd jobs and enjoyed life.

One day a friend, who knew I'd dropped out of the Georgia Institute of
Technology, a good engineering school, told me a friend of hers was looking
for someone to help him start a business. I jumped at the chance and went
over to see Marty Rubin, a lawyer. By extraordinary coincidence, it was
already named Jumping Jack Flash. Then again, may be it was not
a coincidence.

Marty wanted me to manage design and production. He would take care of
sales, finance, and everything else. The business was hand tooled leather
belts and purses, which was then a fad in the United States. He soon sold
me 10% of the business for $2,000 and we became partners.

Now here's how I got the spark. I didn't know anything about management
at first. I'd been just an employee all my life. Marty knew that. He also
knew I had aptitude and motivation. So every morning, on his way to work,
he stopped by Jumping Jack Flash and spent anywhere from 30 minutes to
two hours with me. After about two years of this I had the spark, although
it took me another 20 years to realize what had really happened then....

A common exercise, which he seemed to enjoy greatly, was going through
the morning mail. He would pick up an envelope and say, "Ah, a letter
from customer A. We haven't heard from them in three weeks. I wonder what
they have to say?" I had no idea. And then, guess what? He didn't
open it. Instead, he said something like, "They've been ordering
about once a month. They seem to be on a regular order cycle, wouldn't
you say? But if that's the case, why are we hearing from them a week early?
What does that mean?" I didn't know of course, so Marty would continue
with, "It probably means they have run out and this is a rush order.
Because they ran out of a few sizes, it's just an order to fill a few
gaps. Later we will get their usual order after their monthly inventory.
So this is probably an order for two or three dozen belts."

And I would nod my head wisely in agreement, all the while looking intently
at the letter he held in his hand. I expected him to now open it, confirm
his guess, and then we would move on the the next one. But what did Marty
do? He wasn't finished yet. He would say something like, "But you
know Jack, our most popular size in the resort towns like the one customer
A is in is medium. So they probably ran out of mediums." More nodding
of the head on my part. "And lately they've been selling more of
our new owls and trees design, plus they seem to be getting out of blue
tones. So I'd guess they have ordered a dozen medium owls and trees, and
a dozen assorted brown tones."

And then he would open the letter, and about half the time he would be
right! I was amazed when this first happened, and continued to happen.
But after a few months, I was making predictions of my own, and looking
at clues on my own, and bit by bit thinking on my own. What was I thinking? About
what was the right thing to do, from the customer's perspective. I
was tuning into the world around me and deciphering it's buzzing, blooming
confusion into an orderly, predictiable model of behavior, so that I could
more easily decide what was the right thing to do.

Marty continued his morning drills. He would go over the previous day's
phone call log, giving me similar displays of his marvelous deductive
powers. He would discuss problems I had encountered, and determine, from
what seemed to me to be almost no evidence at all, what probably caused
them. Then, working backwards from that, he would show how the problems
had followed inevitably. His analysis was usually so clear, so right,
and so simple the solution was obvious.

I managed design and production at Jumping Jack Flash for three years.
Sales soared as the fad curve went up and up. And then sales took a nose
dive as the fad collapsed, as all fads do. About a year after I left,
we closed the business down. That auspicious chapter of my life was over.

The Growth of the Spark

The whole Jumpin Jack Flash experience was such a dizzying rise and fall,
and so novel compared to what came before, and I had learned so much,
that I was in somewhat of a state of wonderment when I left. I traveled
a little, read a lot, pondered the mysteries of the universe deep into
the night with my friends, and so on. (At this point I might have had
some of the spark, but it had not yet been fanned into flame. After all,
Jumping Jack Flash was a boom and a bust. It was not that successful.)

It was then that I heard about Diversitech. One of my buddies, Mickey
Chaffin, worked there. He said I might be interested in it. It was only
half a mile away, so I rode my bike over one day and looked around. I
didn't think much of it. Diversitech manufactured precast lightweight
concrete pads for air conditioners and heat pumps. This involved mixing
up concrete, pouring it into metal trays, putting in some reinforcing
mesh so the pad was stong, striking off the top with a stick so the pad
was flat, letting it cure for awhile, tapping the pad out of the tray,
and then cleaning and oiling the tray for the next cycle. It looked like
hard, dirty work. About 15 people worked there. The lightweight concrete
was a novel formulation. It was so light it would almost float in water,
but looked just like normal concrete. I expressed mild interest and went
home.

A few days later we were having a party and George Turner dropped by.
He was one of the three founders of Diversitech and current President.
All three were PHDs from Georgia Tech. He asked me what I thought of Diversitech
and implied he wanted to offer me a good position there. It's been a long
time, but I said something like, "I think what I'm going to do is
to just start at the bottom, and see how far I can work my way up." That
must have put a sparkle in his eye. I started the next week as a laborer,
carrying buckets of concrete from the mixer to the trays. What a start....

Thinking back on it now, it was silly to do it that way. But then again,
how else could I have learned every inch of the business so fast and so
deeply? First I carried buckets. I soon learned not to fill them so full.
Soon I got in shape and could carry two at a time, one in each hand. And
then I became good friends with the mixer man, Toby Whitney. He was a
good fellow. His dream was to turn pro someday on basketball, but due
to a knee problem, that was just not in the cards. So here he was, a bright,
big, strong fellow, lifting 96 pound bags of cement up, cutting them open,
and pouring them into the mixer, along with sand, water, polystyrene beads,
and some chemicals. During lunch he and the guys would get up a game of "hoop." They'd
shoot baskets and joke, and some would dream the dream about going pro
someday. One slender fellow, Slim, at 6 foot 7 inches, had the makings
a real player. Every morning he'd come walking in, and someone would say
something like, "Hey Slim. You still here? I thought you were going
pro!"

So I learned mixing. And I learned "striking," the fine art
of using a stick to strike off the excess concrete and smooth out the
surface after the concrete had been poured from a bucket into a tray.
At first it took several minutes. After a few months, it took about 15
seconds.

And so it went. In a few months I could do all the jobs and knew all
the people, even Anne and George, the only two "office people." Everyone
else was in production or delivery, which was done by our trucks to dealers
in Georgia.

It was hard, dirty work. I'd get so much concrete on my pants that I
would go home, take them off, and if I was careful, I could get them to
stand up by themselves!

Bit by bit, I began making improvements in production. Some were little,
obvious things, like arranging materials and tools so that work would
be more efficient. This was the low hanging fruit. I kept making small
improvements every day, even getting to the point of listing the changes
that might be possible, and checking them off as I got to them. It wasn't
long before I got to the non-obvious changes, like quality.

Diversitech had long had a problem with pad breakage. The concrete pads
would develop tiny cracks as they cured. (This took a few days.) Or they
would just seem weak. The result is many were breaking up while still
in our yard, or worse yet, in the dealer's yard, or the ultimate tragedy,
in the installer's hands. All in all, breakage was running 5% to 10%.
And it was giving the product a bad reputation.

I didn't quite know all this when I started working on the problem, since
I was still just in production. But I could see it was a problem that
must be solved. So I read up on concrete and started taking samples every
day. After they cured in a few days I'd check them for strength. When
I found a weak one(s), I'd talk it over with Toby, the mixer. What might
have caused this one to be weak? He'd think back a few days, and so would
I. Very soon a pattern developed: It was an improper mixture of some kind.
Too much water, not enough, the sand was too wet, the mix was run too
long and so the air entraining agent started bubbling too much, and so
on.

Bit by bit, day by day, week by week, we worked on quality. I ordered
a special concrete compression measurement tool. We began sampling every mix.
I began analyzing data series for patterns. We also started breaking up
good pads to look for problems inside. All this led to the need for
tight, repeatable production processes. (This is nothing new to the
business world, but it was new to me and Diversitech.) The mix had to
be accurately done. The pads had to be cured not too fast. The mix formula
was refined substantially, even to the point of experimentation with new
ingredients to reduce tension failure, the physical reason for breakage.
In about 6 months breakage was so low as to be no problem any more. It
was indeed a pleasure to see the trucks returning empty almost all the
time now: they were not backhauling any broken pads for credit and disposal.
Somewhere around this time George made me Production Manager.

Quality was not Diversitech's only problem. There were many more. I was
reading books on production, management, and all sorts of things by now.
To think like a businessman I was reading Business Week cover to cover.
I did a workflow analysis and tightened up the production process. But
I was stuck on one thing: we were still carrying buckets of mud (as we
called it) around. We were also standing around waiting between mixes.
This was insane! There must be a better way. So I got bold and designed
a 10 foot high platform with a roof to put the mixer on. It would empty
into a steel hopper with jaws at the bottom. A tray would be slid underneath.
The jaws would be opened just a bit, and concrete would flow out into
the tray. When it had the approximate right amount, the jaws were closed,
the tray was struck off, removed, and the next tray was slid in. It was
a promising design. But would it work?

I built it myself out in the yard with occasional help, while production
went on around me. It took about two weeks. And then the big day came
to test it. We temporarily moved the mixer up on the platform with the
forklift. Then we lifted up some sacks of cement, buckets of sand, barrels
of beads, and we were ready. We did the first mix as everyone watched,
using our same proporations, accurately measured. The mix "looked
good", as we say, and so we poured it into the hopper. Then we eased
the steel jaws open and poured the first pad. Disaster! It was too runny.
You could see the excess water dripping out of the jaws, and coming to
the surface when striking off. Scratching our heads, the cause turned
out to be the fact that when you dump an entire mix in the hopper, if
you have paid your gravity bill the extra pressure at the bottom of the
hopper causes the water to be forced out of the saturated cement. The
solution was simple: less water. A few more mixes, and the pads started
coming out perfect! Happy days!

It was a big success. Production immediately switched to the new process,
and the old mixing area was abandoned. Now, every time I walked by it
I would think, "That was the old way. Why did everyone do it for
so long?" That was a question that over the years, evolved into a
more proactive one: "This is the old way. Is there a better way?" As
simple as that question is, it seems few ask it. And fewer still answer
it right.

In about two years production per manhour tripled. By now I was acting
general manager. George left to start another business. I was on my own.

I wasn't satisfied with the usefulness or the timeliness of our monthly
financial statements (prepared by an outside accountant), so I taught
myself double entry accounting and did the books myself. Soon I had instant,
accurate data. Better yet, I understood where that data came from.
I now knew every speck of what composed an Income Statement and a Balance
Sheet. I totally redesigned both. Now where to look for further improvement
was far more obvious. The data spoke to you loudly.

Early on, while still in production, I had started my "daily key
indicators." These are daily figures like total production, rejects,
breakage, average compressive strength, number of workers that day, and
so on. You could glance at it and instantly see how things were going.
Trends and patterns were easy to spot.

So when I moved into the financial area, I just added more data to the
key indicators. I started a weekly key indicators. It had total pads ordered,
total shipped, total on backorder, etc. It had dollars for sales, receipts,
expenses, receivables, payables, etc. It was not hard to calculate a rough
net profit from this, and so we now had instant feedback on how well the
business was going. Since production (and hence costs) was under control,
it was now time to work on the other side of the net profit equation:
sales.

So I did up a sales strategy, hired Diversitech's first salesman, and
off he went to start selling accounts outside the state of Georgia. He
turned out to be a bad salesman, and we had to replace him, but
it was a good decision. Sales started climbing and quickly doubled.
And so for the first time, Diversitech was now firmly in the black.

This story should not go on any longer than it takes to show how the
spark grew. I've taken the time to write it down, so that you can see
how highly motivated I was, and how I struggled, learned, and used what
I learned to learn even faster and better. Something was there, and it
was growing. That something is what I call the spark.

After three years at Diversitech, in 1976 I left and went into small
business consulting. Many of my friends were starting or running all sorts
of fascinating businesses, and they needed advice. George Turner came
back to take up where I left off at Diversitech, and to make even bigger
and better improvements. Diversitech went
on to become "North Americas largest manufacturer of air conditioning
condenser pads and a leading supplier of components and related products
for the heating, ventilating, air conditioning, and refrigeration (HVACR)
industry." They are even cultivating further radical improvement
through their "Invention Portal." (See the menu selection
under Unique Products.)

One crucial improvement I made over the years was to increase wages an
average of 50%. This attracted better people and retained them longer,
because they could now treat a job at Diversitech as a career, or at least
a long term proposition. The better the people, the better the results.

But What Is the Spark?

I refuse to say, until you, the reader, try to answer that question first.
In a few sentences, what is the spark?

I said before that anyone with the spark can effortlessly say what it
is. But they will each say it differently. There is no universal description.
From this we can conclude that one person with the spark cannot describe
it to another without it, because each of us sees the same world so differently.
This presents us with a quandry: How can we say what the spark is to anyone
but ourself?

Speculating perhaps more than I should, I would say evidence of the
spark is the ability and the motivation to spot and solve problems with
a high success rate. But that is well known to some. What is the source of
the spark? What is happening inside the mind?

Just as there are many ways to physically solve most problems,
there are many ways to think about solving them. Indeed, there
is a nearly infinite number of paths the 10 to 100 billion neurons in
the brain can take to getting the right things done well, which is the
same as spotting and solving the right problems with a high success rate.
Because we live in a very complex world, there is seldom a perfect solution
to anything. There is only an approximate, good enough solution. Some
solutions use exact algorithms, such as addition and division, but most
use non-exact approaches known as hueristics. A hueristic is a
rule of thumb that tends to give good enough results on the average. For
example, if it's cloudy outside, we might take an umbrella with us when
we next go out. What we don't do is go outside first, scan the sky, check
the temperature, humidity, and barometer, and then go back inside and
check to see what the top five weather reports are. Instead, we settle
for a quick good enough solution, one arrived at with a hueristic. As
we grow up we learn millions of these little useful rules, principles,
laws, correlations, witty sayings, or whatever other form they may come
in.

And so it seems that when the growth of the mind reaches a certain "critical
mass" of the right hueristics, it crosses an invisible threshold
and now has enough little automatic rules to have the spark. On the average,
when faced with a problem, or faced with finding out what the problem
is, that mind can perform well. It runs through its collection of high
quality hueristics at lightening speed, and out pop the insights that
lead first to figuring out the right thing to do, and then to doing it
right.

Once the mind first crosses that threshold, certain new positive feedback
loops appear. These loops are built from heuristics that work together
in tightly coupled structures. The mind can now learn certain things better
and faster. The more it does of that, the better it becomes at doing it.
And so on. The result is that once you get the initial spark, which
means you have crossed that threshold, your inner development changes
gears to exponential growth, and the mind zooms to heights that were impossible
(and often incomprehensible) before.

Therefore the spark is a critical mass of the right heuristics, structured
into positive feedback loops that greatly accelerate further learning
of more of the right hueristics. What is a "right" hueristic?
It is one that contributes to right action, such as getting the right
things done well.

Is it not so?

Comments

Carl Cox: "The figure with weather imagery confuses me some.
From my perception, as well as from the text of your article, knowing
the right thing to do is more important than doing the wrong thing well.
So why is it that doing the wrong thing well is partly cloudy, when doing
the right thing poorly is dark and ominous? I may not be following the
visual analogy well."

Jack replies: "Excellent observation. I can only guess why
the authors of Leading Strategic Change did it that way. Rereading
a portion of the book gives no clue. I'd guess they were not thinking
in terms of the proper four levels.

But that is neither here nor there. It seems to me that anyone who can
spot that sort of thing probably has, at the very least, the beginnings
of the spark. You are doing what I call 'challenging your inputs.' This
is the skeptical aspect of critical thinking. It is an incredibly useful
skill."

Carl, who saw this article grow, has more to say: "As to
the spark - it cannot be something that contributes solely to management.
It must be something that applies well to management, but influences all
other aspects of life. The closest thing that I can place in myself that
may be this spark is manifold, and written in the context of managing
a theatre production (theatre is a hobby of mine):

- The ability to see from many perspectives: mine, directors,
designers, volunteers, etc.
- The ability to balance perspectives. A better phrase
may be the
ability to manage perspectives. What I mean is that certain
decisions
must be made, none of which will please everyone. You
must know or predict which will be the best and present
them in such a way that
perspectives can continue to work with them.
- Willingness to take action, to make these decisions.
- Willingness and ability to communicate and convince
others, especially those who's perspectives matter, that
the decisions make sense.

Naturally, there's more than that. I think the important aspect is the
ability to percieve, and the willingness to act."

Jack replies: "There is no longer any doubt. You've got it!"

Martha looked over this article and had this to say: "The
spark is a strong desire to understand the process and improve it. In
understanding the process, you become less event oriented. You see things
differently.

Maybe it's a desire for complete understanding. People with the spark
see below the surface of things. They have a fully dimensioned view. It's
like most people see the Earth as flat, but those with the spark see it
as round."

The analysis was performed over a seven year period from 2003 to 2010. The results are summarized in the Summary of Analysis Results, the top of which is shown below:

Click on the table for the full table and a high level discussion of analysis results.

The Universal Causal Chain

This is the solution causal chain present in all problems. Popular approaches to solving the sustainability problem see only what's obvious: the black arrows. This leads to using superficial solutions to push on low leverage points to resolve intermediate causes.

Popular solutions are superficial because they fail to see into the fundamental layer, where the complete causal chain runs to root causes. It's an easy trap to fall into because it intuitively seems that popular solutions like renewable energy and strong regulations should solve the sustainability problem. But they can't, because they don't resolve the root causes.

In the analytical approach, root cause analysis penetrates the fundamental layer to find the well hidden red arrow. Further analysis finds the blue arrow.Fundamental solution elements are then developed to create the green arrow which solves the problem. For more see Causal Chain in the glossary.

This is no different from what the ancient Romans did. It’s a strategy of divide and conquer. Subproblems like these are several orders of magnitude easier to solve because you are no longer trying (in vain) to solve them simultaneously without realizing it. This strategy has changed millions of other problems from insolvable to solvable, so it should work here too.

For example, multiplying 222 times 222 in your head is for most of us impossible. But doing it on paper, decomposing the problem into nine cases of 2 times 2 and then adding up the results, changes the problem from insolvable to solvable.

Change resistance is the tendency for a system to resist change even when a surprisingly large amount of force is applied.

Overcoming change resistance is the crux of the problem, because if the system is resisting change then none of the other subproblems are solvable. Therefore this subproblem must be solved first. Until it is solved, effort to solve the other three subproblems is largely wasted effort.

The root cause of successful change resistance appears to be effective deception in the political powerplace. Too many voters and politicians are being deceived into thinking sustainability is a low priority and need not be solved now.

The high leverage point for resolving the root cause is to raise general ability to detect political deception. We need to inoculate people against deceptive false memes because once people are infected by falsehoods, it’s very hard to change their minds to see the truth.

Life form improper coupling occurs when two social life forms are not working together in harmony.

In the sustainability problem, large for-profit corporations are not cooperating smoothly with people. Instead, too many corporations are dominating political decision making to their own advantage, as shown by their strenuous opposition to solving the environmental sustainability problem.

The root cause appears to be mutually exclusive goals. The goal of the corporate life form is maximization of profits, while the goal of the human life form is optimization of quality of life, for those living and their descendents. These two goals cannot be both achieved in the same system. One side will win and the other side will lose. Guess which side is losing?

The high leverage point for resolving the root cause follows easily. If the root cause is corporations have the wrong goal, then the high leverage point is to reengineer the modern corporation to have the right goal.

The world’s solution model for solving important problems like sustainability, recurring wars, recurring recessions, excessive economic inequality, and institutional poverty has drifted so far it’s unable to solve the problem.

The root cause appears to be low quality of governmental political decisions. Various steps in the decision making process are not working properly, resulting in inability to proactively solve many difficult problems.

This indicates low decision making process maturity. The high leverage point for resolving the root cause is to raise the maturity of the political decision making process.

In the environmental proper coupling subproblem the world’s economic system is improperly coupled to the environment. Environmental impact from economic system growth has exceeded the capacity of the environment to recycle that impact.

This subproblem is what the world sees as the problem to solve. The analysis shows that to be a false assumption, however. The change resistance subproblem must be solved first.

The root cause appears to be high transaction costs for managing common property (like the air we breath). This means that presently there is no way to manage common property efficiently enough to do it sustainably.

The high leverage point for resolving the root cause is to allow new types of social agents (such as new types of corporations) to appear, in order to radically lower transaction costs.

Solutions

There must be a reason popular solutions are not working.

Given the principle that all problems arise from their root causes, the reason popular solutions are not working (after over 40 years of millions of people trying) is popular solutions do not resolve root causes.

This is Thwink.org’s most fundamental insight.

Summary of Solution Elements

Using the results of the analysis as input, 12 solutions elements were developed. Each resolves a specific root cause and thus solves one of the four subproblems, as shown below:

Click on the table for a high level discussion of the solution elements and to learn how you can hit the bullseye.

The 4 Subproblems

The solutions you are about to see differ radically from popular solutions, because each resolves a specific root cause for a single subproblem. The right subproblems were found earlier in the analysis step, which decomposed the one big Gordian Knot of a problem into The Four Subproblems of the Sustainability Problem.

Everything changes with a root cause resolution approach. You are no longer firing away at a target you can’t see. Once the analysis builds a model of the problem and finds the root causes and their high leverage points, solutions are developed to push on the leverage points.

Because each solution is aimed at resolving a specific known root cause, you can't miss. You hit the bullseye every time. It's like shooting at a target ten feet away. The bullseye is the root cause. That's why Root Cause Analysis is so fantastically powerful.

The high leverage point for overcoming change resistance is to raise general ability to detect political deception. We have to somehow make people truth literate so they can’t be fooled so easily by deceptive politicians.

This will not be easy. Overcoming change resistance is the crux of the problem and must be solved first, so it takes nine solution elements to solve this subproblem. The first is the key to it all.

B. How to Achieve Life Form Proper Coupling

In this subproblem the analysis found that two social life forms, large for-profit corporations and people, have conflicting goals. The high leverage point is correctness of goals for artificial life forms. Since the one causing the problem right now is Corporatis profitis, this means we have to reengineer the modern corporation to have the right goal.

Corporations were never designed in a comprehensive manner to serve the people. They evolved. What we have today can be called Corporation 1.0. It serves itself. What we need instead is Corporation 2.0. This life form is designed to serve people rather than itself. Its new role will be that of a trusted servant whose goal is providing the goods and services needed to optimize quality of life for people in a sustainable manner.

What’s drifted too far is the decision making model that governments use to decide what to do. It’s incapable of solving the sustainability problem.

The high leverage point is to greatly improve the maturity of the political decision making process. Like Corporation 1.0, the process was never designed. It evolved. It’s thus not quite what we want.

The solution works like this: Imagine what it would be like if politicians were rated on the quality of their decisions. They would start competing to see who could improve quality of life and the common good the most. That would lead to the most pleasant Race to the Top the world has ever seen.

Presently the world’s economic system is improperly coupled to the environment. The high leverage point is allow new types of social agents to appear to radically reduce the cost of managing the sustainability problem.

This can be done with non-profit stewardship corporations. Each steward would have the goal of sustainably managing some portion of the sustainability problem. Like the way corporations charge prices for their goods and services, stewards would charge fees for ecosystem service use. The income goes to solving the problem.

Corporations gave us the Industrial Revolution. That revolution is incomplete until stewards give us the Sustainability Revolution.

This analyzes the world’s standard political system and explains why it’s operating for the benefit of special interests instead of the common good. Several sample solutions are presented to help get you thwinking.

Note how generic most of the tools/concepts are. They apply to far more than the sustainability problem. Thus the glossary is really The Problem Solver's Guide to Difficult Social System Problems, using the sustainability problem as a running example.